


vanilla daylights

by eruriku



Series: antología [3]
Category: Free!
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-20
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2018-02-13 23:41:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2169810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eruriku/pseuds/eruriku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seven-year-old Gou has a bit of a nightmare problem. What's an older brother gonna do? kid!Rin and kid!Gou sibling fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	vanilla daylights

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zoetekohana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoetekohana/gifts).



> This was originally gonna be a bigger fic thing about Gou's nightmares but that idea went down the drain after months of not touching the doc.
> 
> This is dedicated to my lovely Zoe (zoetekohana on Tumblr), who requested for a little bit of Rin and Gou sibling stuff.
> 
> The next episode's coming out in like two hours and I have no idea what to expect.

The first time they wake her up, she’s too young to understand what had just happened.

Behind glittering red eyes that are merely seven years old, Gou can see flashes of her nightmare replaying in her head with no idea how to stop them. She weakly acknowledges that the images she’s seeing are rather horrifying; they involve rough waters, harsh waves, and black skies, and if she thinks about them too much, she can remember how each droplet of rain had landed on her face with a little too much force. In her small mind, everything feels absolutely _bad_ and _wrong_ about the things she’s seeing, but she has no idea how to stop thinking about them.

Instead, she cries.

Gou is vaguely aware that her older brother, Rin, is snoring away in the bed next to her but she’s so terrified that she slowly sits up, sniffling quietly and rubbing at her nose, which has immediately started running. Maybe if she cries long enough, she’ll wear herself out to the point where she can just fall back asleep or pass out. Rin’s presence just a foot away is the only thing that reminds her to be as silent as possible but her distraught hiccuping still pierces through his deep slumber and in no time, the eight-year-old is also sitting up in his bed, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

“Gou?” he mutters, wondering what time it could possibly be that his little sister would already be awake.

Gou doesn’t say anything, not that she’s able to, but the realisation that she’s woken Rin from his sleep and that he’s discovered her like this washes her with a thin wave of embarrassment and she curls into herself, pulling her knees up to her chest and hugging them tightly. Rin narrows his eyes once he realises that Gou is crying and flings his blanket off of his legs. He slips out of his bed and stumbles onto Gou’s to sit in front of her. She feels his proximity as the bed shifts with the additional weight and presses her forehead harder into her knees. Rin frowns at this and, still rubbing his eyes, reaches over slowly to tug the blanket away from her legs as gently as possible.

“Gou, what happened?” he rasps. He keeps tugging at the corner of the blanket but it’s lodged tight between her trembling arms and her knees.

“Gou,” Rin pleads, annoyed that she isn’t responding to him when he’s obviously trying to help her out. He clicks his tongue against his teeth and stops pulling.

“Come on, let go of the blanket so it’s not so stuffy,” he says softly, trying to reason with her. Gou’s sniffles pause for a second but that’s enough to give him some hope and distracts her long enough for him to pull the blanket from where it’s wedged between her knobby knees and elbows. As the blanket slips away from her, her elbows are pulled along with it and she stumbles out of her previously hunched position. Gou looks up to glare at her older brother but Rin is unfazed as he stuffs the blanket into a messy bunch behind him and raises an unamused eyebrow at her.

“What? You woke _me_ up,” he reminds her, and she pouts through teary eyes. Rin takes her hands quickly before she can hide her face again, and pulls her forward so she can face him properly. He opens his mouth to ask her again - _What happened? What’s wrong? Why did you wake me?!_ \- but thinks better of it at the last second and places her hands gently on the bed in between them. Gou looks at her hands for a brief second and flicks her eyes back up to her brother curiously. He peers at her with his mouth pursed in thought and his eyebrows furrowed with worry. A moment later, he opens his arms ever so slightly and Gou crumbles, her nightmares flooding back into her mind, and launches herself into Rin’s chest, and crying openly into his pajama shirt.

“Okay, okay,” Rin mutters gently into her hair, rubbing her back soothingly. Gou presses her face closer to his chest and gasps something about a storm and “so much water” and “I’m so scared” and Rin pieces enough of the broken sentences together to figure out that she’d had a nightmare. And a pretty bad one at that. He comforts her for a moment before an idea strikes.

“Hey, Gou?” he mutters against her hair.

“Hmm?”

“…D’you want ice cream?”

At first Gou lifts her head and gives him the most dubious look she can through bloodshot eyes.

“Ice cream?” she repeats incredulously. Rin shrugs, immediately defensive.

“It always makes _me_ feel better! And I’m trying to help!” he snaps at her.

“You’re not doing a very good job,” Gou mumbles pulling one hand away to wipe at her nose. Rin grimaces and silently notes to himself not to touch that hand. Instead, he grabs her other one and climbs off of her bed slowly so as to make as little noise as possible.

“Come on, we’re getting ice cream,” he tells her, and that’s that. Gou sighs to herself shortly before climbing off the bed and following him, her clean hand clasped tightly in his.

Rin and Gou fumble through the dark down the hallway until Rin manages to feel for the light switch in the kitchen and flicks it on. He lets go of Gou’s hand and heads for the freezer.

“Wash your hands, yeah?” he tells his little sister, pulling open the freezer and blanching at the sight of a nearly empty compartment.

“There’s only Dad’s vanilla ice cream left,” he mutters half-heartedly, pulling the lone cup of vanilla ice cream out of the freezer and setting it on the counter. He glares at the offending cup but clicks his tongue and moves to a drawer to retrieve two spoons anyway.

“Guess it can’t be helped. You like vanilla well enough, right?”

“It’s okay. My favourite’s chocolate, though.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Gou wipes her hands as Rin sinks to the floor of the kitchen with the ice cream and two spoons in hand. She kneels down next to him and he hands her a spoon.

“Can’t we eat on the sofa?” she asks him quietly, spooning a hefty amount of ice cream from the cup and placing it in her mouth.

“Mom says we can’t eat in the living room, remember?”

“Mom’s not awake,” Gou pouts, reaching for another spoonful. Rin snorts, holding the ice cream cup away from her and flicks her cheek lightly.

“And that’s why you always get in trouble,” he teases her. Gou opens her mouth to protest but he nudges the ice cream cup into her hands for her to hold.

“And anyway, we should probably go back to sleep after this,” he continues, a yawn enunciating his words.

“I don’t really feel like going back to sleep, but you can go ahead,” Gou mutters, avoiding her brother’s eyes. Rin tilts his head and sighs in resignation.

_Pretty bad dreams, huh._

“Well, if you’re not sleeping, then I don’t have to sleep either. Plus, I think the sun’s going to come up soon anyway. We can watch TV with the volume down really low instead. Hey, maybe some cartoons might be on, or one of those funny shows that Dad likes to watch! If only I could remember what channel they’re on…” he chatters away on purpose, eating ice cream happily and scooting in close to Gou so they can share the sweet without making a mess. In the corner of Gou’s mind, she registers what her older brother is trying to do for her and smiles to herself as she listens to him talk about his favourite cartoons.

She normally hogs as much ice cream as possible but this time she lets him have the last bite. Rin ruffles her hair in thanks, much to her chagrin, and they end up watching cartoons at the lowest possible volume they can still hear ( _“Gou, I still can’t hear anything._ ” _“But mom and dad’ll wake up!”_ ). Despite their best efforts to stay up, their parents find Gou sleeping against Rin’s shoulder a few hours later. Rin’s snoring lightly with his head leaning back into the couch pillows and the morning news is droning on quietly in the background. Rin had quickly washed the spoons and set them to dry so the only evidence that they’d eaten ice cream in the middle of the night is the absence of the vanilla ice cream in the freezer.

Their parents decide that they can be scolded later. There are plenty of hours in the morning and plenty more to follow. Besides. Little kids need all the sleep they can get.


End file.
